School Picnic

One of the top ten events of each school year is the School Picnic.  One entire day of the last week of school the student body gathers at the City Park.  It was a time to reflect knowing that each of us had achieved the next level.  Freshmen were no longer doormats.  Sophomores had moved to a respectable Junior status.  Juniors had elevated themselves to that level where they expected underclassmen to visualize words like monarch, royalty, sovereign, and regal when in the presence of a Senior.  Like Mr. “C” and his baton, we owned a scepter.  For proof check out our yearbook’s page 85 showing our high school band in the Citrus Fair Parade.  That is Bill Fredericks leading the talent. Check out the upper right corner.

Games like three legged races and tug-o-war created competition between classes.  We won the tug-o-war as Seniors no sweat but as Juniors we had bigger stronger jerks on our side of the rope and humbled the Seniors.  Charlie Greppi, Charlie Fayter, Ted Emmel, Ron Petersen, Stephan Longo and Ken Little will forever be disliked by those Seniors from the Class of ’64.

It was a day where massive amounts of ink were transferred to the pages of our yearbooks.  That ink is still there and it is interesting how what was written fifty years ago has played out.  Many of us will bring our Spectators June 27th knowing the second week of June, 1965 that we had until the fourth week of June 2015 before we could fill up more pages recounting events of the past five decades.